Reduplicative words like chiffchaff or helter-skelter are part of ordinary language use yet most often found in substandard registers in which attitudinal and expressive meaning components are iconically foregrounded. In a rating experiment using nonwords that either conform to, or deviate from, conventional reduplicative patterns in German, the present study identified affective meaning dimensions, judgments of familiarity and esthetic evaluations of sound qualities associated with such words. In a subsequent recall test, we examined the respective mnemonic potential of the different types of reduplication. Results suggest that, in the absence of semantic content, reduplicative forms are inherently associated with several affective meaning associations that are generally considered positive. Two types of reduplicative patterns, namely full reduplication and [i-a]-vowel-alternating reduplication, boost these positive effects to a particularly pronounced degree, leading to an increase in perceived euphony, funniness, familiarity, appreciation, and positive belittling (cuteness) and, at the same time, a decrease in arousal. These two types also turn out to be particularly memorable when compared both to other types of reduplication and to non-reduplicative structures. This study demonstrates that reduplicative morphology may in and of itself, that is, irrespective of the phonemic and the semantic content, contribute to the affective meaning and esthetic evaluation of words.

Every day people see, describe, and remember motion events. However, the relation between multimodal encoding of motion events in speech and gesture, and memory is not yet fully understood. Moreover, whether language typology modulates this relation remains to be tested. This study investigates whether the type of motion event information (path or manner) mentioned in speech and gesture predicts which information is remembered and whether this varies across speakers of typologically different languages. Dutch- and Turkish-speakers watched and described motion events and completed a surprise recognition memory task. For both Dutch- and Turkish-speakers, manner memory was at chance level. Participants who mentioned path in speech during encoding were more accurate at detecting changes to the path in the memory task. The relation between mentioning path in speech and path memory did not vary cross-linguistically. Finally, the co-speech gesture did not predict memory above mentioning path in speech. These findings suggest that how speakers describe a motion event in speech is more important than the typology of the speakers’ native language in predicting motion event memory. The motion event videos are available for download for future research at https://osf.io/p8cas/.

The role of morphemes in lexical recognition has been extensively explored in recent years, although the evidence from older adults is extremely scarce. In this study, we carry out a lexical decision task to assess the interference generated by morphological composition of pseudo-words (i.e., the longer and more error prone decisions on pseudo-words made up of morphemes in comparison to pseudo-words without morphological appearance) in a group of young and older adults (mean = 74 years). The results show the expected effect on both response latencies and error rates for both groups. The effect of imageability is also significant. The specific results for the older adults show an interaction between the morphological effect and cognitive reserve: older adults with higher levels of cognitive reserve are more sensitive to morphological interference than older adults with lower cognitive reserve. The overall results are interpreted based on current models of morphological processing and aging.

It has been suggested that multilingualism can lead to increased cognitive flexibility and creativity. No studies to date, however, have investigated whether this advantage leads to a greater propensity to find meaning in different kinds of novel metaphors. This article reports a self-paced reading study that focuses on whether such an increased propensity is displayed by multilingual English speakers, as opposed to monolingual English speakers. The article explores the difference between two broad types of novelty in metaphorical expressions, which are distinguished by how readily they conform to existing metaphorical schemata. The results indicate that both monolinguals and multilinguals find novel metaphors that conform readily to an existing schema easier to comprehend those that do not. They also take longer to seek meaning in metaphors that conform readily to an existing schema. Multilinguals are more likely than monolinguals to find meaning in both types of novel metaphor. The theoretical distinction drawn between metaphors that conform readily to an existing schema and those that do not highlights the variability of meaning in novel metaphors. It also focuses attention on the different extents to which hearers seek rich meanings as opposed to less rich but more easily derived ones.

So far, cognitive linguistics studies on COVID-19 have focused mainly on conceptual metaphors, paying scant attention to other construal operations such as force dynamics (FD). Adopting Kövecses’s (2020, Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio) hybrid account of conceptual metaphor and FD, this study attempts to outline an enriched cognitive view of the figurative conceptualization of illness. It also aims to answer the question: Can FD and conceptual metaphors be merged in illness metaphors, particularly corona-related ones? Research in cognitive linguistics has focused on certain source domains, such as war, fire, natural force, and wild animal, through which COVID-19 is conceptualized metaphorically. Since these metaphors feature the exchange of forces and actions, a more detailed account of these two construals could be fruitful, especially the potential force schema which underlies the detected source domains. Using an amalgamated model of conceptual metaphor theory and FD, significant associations were identified between two force-exerting elements, namely Agonist and Antagonist. These findings raise important theoretical issues that have a bearing on clarifying the correlation between illness metaphors and Talmy’s force-dynamic theory to cast some light on the complex metaphorical expressions embracing the subject under scrutiny.

Languages differ in the way motion events are encoded. In satellite-framed languages, motion verbs typically encode manner, while in verb-framed languages, path. We investigated the ways in which satellite-framed Dutch and verb-framed Turkish co-determine one’s attention to motion events in early bilinguals. In an EEG oddball paradigm, Turkish–Dutch bilinguals (n = 25) and Dutch controls (n = 27) watched short video clips of motion events, followed by a still picture that matched the preceding video in four ways (oddball design: 10% full match, 10% manner match, 10% endpoint match, and 70% full mismatch). We found that both groups showed similar oddball P300 effects, associated with task-related attention. Group differences were revealed in a late positivity (LP): The endpoint-match elicited a larger LP than the manner-match in the bilinguals, which may reflect language-driven attention. Our results indicate that cross-linguistic manner encoding difference impacts attention at a later stage.

One typical use of negation is to refer to exceptions. In a visual display showing several similar items (majority) and one exception, referring to the exception by negating the majority should therefore be pragmatically felicitous. We investigated whether comprehenders are sensitive to these pragmatic aspects when processing negative sentences and having to identify the according items in the visual display. In Experiment 1, participants read affirmative and negative sentences referring to either the exception or the majority object in strongly biased displays. Additionally, unbiased displays were implemented, showing equal numbers of objects of each type. Identification times of the correct referent were shorter with the biased display independent of sentence polarity. Also, picking the exceptional item in the biased display was faster than picking a majority item, independent of sentence polarity. Thus, participants did not specifically profit from pragmatically felicitous conditions when processing negation. Critically, in the biased displays, the exceptional object was highly salient, which might have initially drawn the participant’s attention to this object, resulting in a general speed-up. Therefore, in Experiment 2, we used a biased display with reduced saliency of the exceptional object. Again negation did not result in a specific speed-up due to pragmatically correct negation use. Thus, negation does not seem to facilitate the identification of an exceptional object.